Service providers and device manufacturers (e.g., wireless, cellular, etc.) are continually challenged to deliver value and convenience to consumers by, for example, providing compelling network services. In many popular network services, such as email, Short Message Service (SMS) messaging (also called text messaging) and social networks with various posting strategies, a user communicates with other users of those services, who are called contacts of the user. Typically each such service invites a user registering for the service to identify himself or herself with a user name for all future interactions with the service so that messages by and for each user can be properly directed. If a chosen user name is not available, the user is invited to generate a new name. As the number of available network services proliferates, and users register for several of them, multiple user names are adopted by the same individual entity (whether an organization or person). Consequently the same entity can appear with different identifiers on several contact lists of a user on several network services. It becomes a burden for the user to link the multiple different identifiers of one entity on several different contact lists for different network services. Thus, it becomes tedious, time consuming and otherwise difficult to perform several network functions, such as directing a post to one individual on all available services, or recognize or otherwise coordinate the information (such as status posts and profile information like age, interests, music tastes, location) received from different identifiers that represent the same individual entity on different services.